The present invention relates to an apparatus for feeding closures provided with a tube to an operating unit.
In particular, the present invention relates to an apparatus suitable for feeding, according to a preset arrangement, closures provided with a tube to the closure-fitting unit of a machine for filling containers with liquid products.
As known, containers are used for liquid products which are upwardly closed by a closure which is provided with a dispenser apparatus such as a spraying mechanism and is provided, in a downward position, with a tube for drawing the liquid contained in said container. Such containers are considerably widespread on the market.
Said closures are applied to their respective containers by a closure-fitting unit to which said closures are fed in succession by means of a feeder apparatus which receives the closures at random and arranges them uniformly so that they can be guided in an orderly and appropriate manner to the closure-fitting unit.
An apparatus of this kind is known which essentially comprises a rotary disk-like conveyor on a central region whereof the closures are fed at random. Said rotary conveyor is peripherally flanked by a fixed shield and has a plurality of mutually equidistant peripheral recesses into which the closures, under the action of centrifugal force, are caused to become arranged with their tube arranged upward.
In this kind of apparatus, the closures can enter the recesses only by virtue of random movements of said closures during their disorderly movement on the rotary conveyor, and said entry is rendered considerably difficult and problematical, since random movements rarely occur in such a manner as to arrange the tubes substantially vertically and cause the closures to enter the recesses.
The apparatus of the described type is therefore operatively very slow and necessarily has considerable dimensions and a considerable number of recesses in order to increase the statistical probability of the entry of the closures into said recesses.
Furthermore, if the tubes of closures fed at random to the described apparatus become entangled, as frequently occurs, said apparatus is unable to disentangle them so as to allow regular feeding of the closures to the closure-fitting unit, and said closures remain on the rotary disk-like conveyor and negatively affect the entry of the other closures into said recesses.